(This was written last night. My last fleeting thought before unconsciousness was “Hey, you’re pretty tired. Good chance this post doesn’t make sense. Close the computer and check tomorrow before posting it.” I wish my half-conscious instincts were that sharp all the time)

Sometimes I get into this mood. It’s hard to describe. A little lonely, I guess, but not in a bad way. It’s a weird mood, because I feel really creative in it, inspired even, but I can never coalesce that feeling into something productive. It’s a wandering mood, and keeping my mind focused on anything kills it.

So I’ll start trying to figure out precisely what it is, try to figure out some metaphor for the feeling, and by the time I get more than two sentences written I’ve lost it. Or maybe my mind’s wandered to something else.

For a really long time, I’ve wanted to write a story that takes place at 3:00 in the morning over instant messenger. When you usually see chats portrayed in movies or TV, it’s always full of tension. Nobody really tries to get that feeling of disconnect. The one person sitting in front of a monitor, thinking what the next word should be as he types. Pausing in the middle of sentences. Deleting lines. Not dramatically, but just because he noticed a typo or didn’t like a word he used. Nobody really tries to portray how a person imagines their chat partner to be reacting, how they interpret the words that appear on the screen before them.

But those kinds of conversations usually revolve around nothings. You’d need some interesting subject of conversation or another to pull that off. And in making the conversation interesting, you miss the point. It becomes about the conversation itself, and not about the black, empty, imaginary room that you and the person on the other side of the chat window are filling slowly with thoughts, with images.

When I get in these moods, in these weird little lonely moods, I can imagine perfectly how the scene should feel, but I can’t fill it. And when I can fill the scene, I’ve lost the feeling for it.

It’s like a dream. The more you try to chase after the memory, the farther away it goes. Maybe that’s precisely what this feeling is. Just a somnambulant daze where a part of my mind is already asleep, and the rest doesn’t realize it yet.

Maybe if I try to type while I go to sleep. head down, eyes closed, fingers moving across the keyboard subtly, because they know how to traverse the keys without my mind’s help. They just transfer the thoughts directly.